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Jornal “Va Kio” - Legal Consultancy
How Many Women are Trafficked in the Sex Industry?

No.463 – 2008.06.25 News

What is it like behind the scene of the countries with a flourishing sex industry? Take an Asian country for example; the prosperity of its sex business has directly increased the number of women being trafficked into the land. The phenomenon has aroused international attention which put pressure on the country to take effective measures to restrain the practice.

Sex industry is a traditional business to the country. The advancement of the economy has resulted in the reluctance of the local women to enter into the industry. To maintain adequate “supply” to the customers, the country must resort to other countries or regions. The local gangsters take advantages from this demand. They claim to offer high-income jobs to cajole foreign women to work in the country. Upon these victims’ arrival, their passports and identification documents will be forfeited and detained by the traffickers. Some of the victims are even forced to take drugs. Once they get addicted, they will not be able to escape and rely on the traffickers to quench their thirst of drugs. These ladies are told to pay off their debts if they want to leave, yet the amount is mainly the cost of drugs. For the sake of getting out of this mishap, many of the sufferers force themselves into prostitution. Those who tried to flee from the cage will only be beaten up severely and resold to other places. Only a few of them managed to save themselves and returned to their hometown. While the rest of the victims will be made “vanished”…

Victims of sex trafficking are mainly women and children, however a small amount of men and boys are being sold to the sex industry. Approximately 600,000 to 800,000 women and children are trafficked across international borders world wide every year. Merely the inland number of human trafficking exceeds a million annually.

In 1997, human trafficking activities were condemned as a crime in Macao. To tackle the increasing international trafficking activities, the Macao SAR government approved Law No. 6/2008, Combatthe Crime of Trafficking in Persons (Lei n.º 6/2008, Combate ao crime de tráfico de pessoas) to ameliorate its legal system, to sharpen the sentence of related crimes and to more effectively implement its obligation for being the applicable region to a number of acts of international law. The enactment stated that trafficking people into sex industry will be condemned to a maximum 20-year of imprisonment.

To effectively inhibit crimes of trafficking, in addition to the legislation and enforcement of law, public awareness is indispensable. Local people can safeguard the sufferers by informing the police of suspected victims or cases in order to save the victims and put the traffickers into jail.

The Human Trafficking Deterrent Measures Concern Committee (Comissão de Acompanhamento das Medidas de Dissuasão do Tráfico de Pessoas)
24-hour Report Hotline: 2888 9911; Helpline: 2888 9922.

Note: With reference to Article 2, Law of Combat the Crime of Trafficking in Persons.

(Source by DSAJ)

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